McDonalds Unveils Self-Service Kiosks Nationwide, But What Does It Mean For Their Employees?

Increasingly, self-serve kiosks/ automated ordering are beloved by fast food restaurants. Starbucks offers an app and regional sandwich chain and mid-Atlantic cultural icon Wawa has had touchscreens for years. And now, McDonalds is joining the charge with self-serve kiosks nationwide. Some are insisting this is because of political pressure to raise the minimum wage, but that is, at best, disingenuous and seems to misunderstand what these self-serve kiosks are supposed to achieve.

We’ve already talked about robots and their never-ending struggle to get a foothold in the fast food industry, but the idea of robots taking our jobs fundamentally misunderstands how we use robots in our society. Robots, whether they’re Siri booking us restaurant reservations or a touchscreen taking our order, aren’t popular because they replace workers. They’re popular because they allow workers to be more productive while taking annoying tasks off their hands.

The next time you’re in a McDonald’s, watch what the cashiers do and you’ll notice their primary job is not, in fact, taking orders and processing payment. It’s expediting the orders that have already been put in. McDonald’s is a volume business: The faster you get your food and the faster you eat it, the faster you’re out the door so somebody else can come in. Consumers are fully aware of this and it manifests itself in odd ways. The company has struggled for years with the rumor that it used hard plastic chairs to discourage loitering more than fifteen minutes over a meal, despite the fact that it really was just following standard restaurant practice.

McDonald’s has refined the art of feeding you cheap burgers down to a science, but there’s one area where the chain breaks down: Ordering. Anybody who’s been stuck behind a grown adult who screams at fast food workers, is unable to decide on a soda flavor, or changes their order eight or nine times is experiencing something that — on a grand scale — drives fast food executives bonkers. A touchscreen puts the burden of getting the order right, and swiping their card, on the customer, so the cashier/expediter can turn the food around faster. A touchscreen is worth it, because they get more productivity for their buck.

It’s true that as we introduce more robots and more tools into our workforce, across a host of industries, the economy and the labor force is going to change in ways we don’t understand yet. And that means some jobs are going to change or even cease to exist in our lifetimes. But make no mistake, robots won’t be coming for any job tomorrow. Especially when most of them can’t turn a doorknob without falling over.

Clearly an advance in efficiency that seems only natural. Putting in an order and payment is automated in so many other areas that I’m not sure what the issue really is. Other than using this as a rallying point over “pet political view X”.

You still need people to prepare, maintain, manage the process. It’s literally turning the cashier POS 180 degrees to face the customer.

Went into McDonalds in my neighborhood for breakfast and there was a manager clearly losing their patience while tryingcto instruct an old couple trying to use the machine while the workers behind the counter were screaming at the old people on line to go around the other old people to order their food at the counter. If there was anything to discourage me from eating fast food, it aint the food itself but the experience of trying to get it lol

Is this going to turn into Redbox though? That was supposed to make renting movies more convenient, yet 9 times out of 10 when I try to use one I get stuck behind some idiot who is reading the description of EVERY movie in the machine over the phone to his lazy ass wife who couldn’t be arsed to come with him.